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we open in just under 18 hours

..and I’m apparently not going to sleep tonight. Because today was wicked stressful and O HAI I HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER.

I’m behind on updates – I have a few waiting to go – but if I’m truly going to blog about the process of doing a professional haunt, I shouldn’t leave out the brain explodey bits.

So, we were featured again on the news this week, and that was pretty awesome! There’s a news story on mlive, too, that I haven’t caught yet. Very much yay!

We had our electrical inspection last week, which took all of five seconds. We had to get some GFI outlets. Done. Moving on!

Now, when you’re doing a haunt, everyone knows to be wary of Ye Local Fire Marshal. We talked to ours early on, went over our list of proposed materials to be used, and received a green light.

We were…a little naive in thinking that was all we had to do.

Maybe a week ago, the same folks that had done our electrical inspection told us we had to have a building inspection. We’re using a car repair bay – no sprinklers, but the structure had been used for decades as is. And our fire marshal hadn’t had any concerns about that or about fire proofing.

The building inspector? He had much concern.

I showed him around the haunt today and no sir, he didn’t like it. He informed me he was going off to talk to the guys at the fire station.

And I threw up I waited for What Comes Next. Which was three cars bringing the fire marshal, the fire chief, and a local gov’t fella, all who had to sign off on this event.

Or, ya know, not.

I showed them around. I said ‘yessir’ a whole lot. We discussed our emergency exits, staffing, fire extinguishers, etc. They had concerns I could pretty much fix ASAP. I told them we were going to have police on site; they offered to park a fire engine on site – which I’ve not seen at a haunt EVER – and between us all we came up with a plan to make the building inspector happy.

(As much as I feel overwhelmed at being involved in so much of this process? Thank heavens I am. I could answer almost all the questions fired at me..except for, “So who called for a building inspection..?” No one actually seems to have that answer..)

They left. I threw up. I started making the recommended changes. Bones saw my texts, called, sounding understandably stressed. I didn’t cry. (I really wanted to cry.) (I’m very very PMSy.)

I called my haunt dad. That helped.

The building inspector had someone drop off a WOW YOU SUCK AND I DO NOT APPROVE notice. At this point, I was completely confused. I had two verbal ‘yes you’re ok’d and one written ‘you are most definitely not ok’.

I sent that info to Bones in a text with links to the referenced code, and I went back to work. His office staff stopped by, followed by Bones, and he and I decided to try to touch base with the fire marshal again. Which finally happened via phone, and we seem to be good to go.

Except holy POOP I could use more staff for our last two days.

Traditionally, staffing is not a part of the haunting gig I enjoy very much. Working in a haunt is AWESOME. Finding haunt actors can be…frustrating. We will have a great cast this weekend. After that..?

We’ve hit the point in this project where it’s gonna happen, and all you can do is enjoy the ride.